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Month: September 2017

Still, most software, even in the safety-obsessed world of aviation, is made the old-fashioned way, with engineers writing their requirements in prose and programmers coding them up in a programming language like C. As Bret Victor made clear in his essay, model-based design is relatively unusual. “A lot of people in the FAA think code generation is magic, and hence call for greater scrutiny,” Shivappa told me.

Most programmers feel the same way. They like code. At least they understand it. Tools that write your code for you and verify its correctness using the mathematics of “finite-state machines” and “recurrent systems” sound esoteric and hard to use, if not just too good to be true.

It is a pattern that has played itself out before. Whenever programming has taken a step away from the writing of literal ones and zeros, the loudest objections have come from programmers. Margaret Hamilton, a celebrated software engineer on the Apollo missions—in fact the coiner of the phrase “software engineering”—told me that during her first year at the Draper lab at MIT, in 1964, she remembers a meeting where one faction was fighting the other about transitioning away from “some very low machine language,” as close to ones and zeros as you could get, to “assembly language.” “The people at the lowest level were fighting to keep it. And the arguments were so similar: ‘Well how do we know assembly language is going to do it right?’”

“Guys on one side, their faces got red, and they started screaming,” she said. She said she was “amazed how emotional they got.”

You could do all the testing you wanted and you’d never find all the bugs.

Emmanuel Ledinot, of Dassault Aviation, pointed out that when assembly language was itself phased out in favor of the programming languages still popular today, like C, it was the assembly programmers who were skeptical this time. No wonder, he said, that “people are not so easily transitioning to model-based software development: They perceive it as another opportunity to lose control, even more than they have already.”

The bias against model-based design, sometimes known as model-driven engineering, or MDE, is in fact so ingrained that according to a recent paper, “Some even argue that there is a stronger need to investigate people’s perception of MDE than to research new MDE technologies.”

Which sounds almost like a joke, but for proponents of the model-based approach, it’s an important point: We already know how to make complex software reliable, but in so many places, we’re choosing not to. Why?

In 2011, Chris Newcombe had been working at Amazon for almost seven years, and had risen to be a principal engineer. He had worked on some of the company’s most critical systems, including the retail-product catalog and the infrastructure that managed every Kindle device in the world. He was a leader on the highly prized Amazon Web Services team, which maintains cloud servers for some of the web’s biggest properties, like Netflix, Pinterest, and Reddit. Before Amazon, he’d helped build the backbone of Steam, the world’s largest online-gaming service. He is one of those engineers whose work quietly keeps the internet running. The products he’d worked on were considered massive successes. But all he could think about was that buried deep in the designs of those systems were disasters waiting to happen.

“Human intuition is poor at estimating the true probability of supposedly ‘extremely rare’ combinations of events in systems operating at a scale of millions of requests per second,” he wrote in a paper. “That human fallibility means that some of the more subtle, dangerous bugs turn out to be errors in design; the code faithfully implements the intended design, but the design fails to correctly handle a particular ‘rare’ scenario.”

Newcombe was convinced that the algorithms behind truly critical systems—systems storing a significant portion of the web’s data, for instance—ought to be not just good, but perfect. A single subtle bug could be catastrophic. But he knew how hard bugs were to find, especially as an algorithm grew more complex. You could do all the testing you wanted and you’d never find them all.

“Few programmers write even a rough sketch of what their programs will do before they start coding.”

This is why he was so intrigued when, in the appendix of a paper he’d been reading, he came across a strange mixture of math and code—or what looked like code—that described an algorithm in something called “TLA+.” The surprising part was that this description was said to be mathematically precise: An algorithm written in TLA+ could in principle be proven correct. In practice, it allowed you to create a realistic model of your problem and test it not just thoroughly, but exhaustively. This was exactly what he’d been looking for: a language for writing perfect algorithms.

TLA+, which stands for “Temporal Logic of Actions,” is similar in spirit to model-based design: It’s a language for writing down the requirements—TLA+ calls them “specifications”—of computer programs. These specifications can then be completely verified by a computer. That is, before you write any code, you write a concise outline of your program’s logic, along with the constraints you need it to satisfy (say, if you were programming an ATM, a constraint might be that you can never withdraw the same money twice from your checking account). TLA+ then exhaustively checks that your logic does, in fact, satisfy those constraints. If not, it will show you exactly how they could be violated.

The language was invented by Leslie Lamport, a Turing Award–winning computer scientist. With a big white beard and scruffy white hair, and kind eyes behind large glasses, Lamport looks like he might be one of the friendlier professors at the American Hogwarts. Now at Microsoft Research, he is known as one of the pioneers of the theory of “distributed systems,” which describes any computer system made of multiple parts that communicate with each other. Lamport’s work laid the foundation for many of the systems that power the modern web.

For Lamport, a major reason today’s software is so full of bugs is that programmers jump straight into writing code. “Architects draw detailed plans before a brick is laid or a nail is hammered,” he wrote in an article. “But few programmers write even a rough sketch of what their programs will do before they start coding.” Programmers are drawn to the nitty-gritty of coding because code is what makes programs go; spending time on anything else can seem like a distraction. And there is a patient joy, a meditative kind of satisfaction, to be had from puzzling out the micro-mechanics of code. But code, Lamport argues, was never meant to be a medium for thought. “It really does constrain your ability to think when you’re thinking in terms of a programming language,” he says. Code makes you miss the forest for the trees: It draws your attention to the working of individual pieces, rather than to the bigger picture of how your program fits together, or what it’s supposed to do—and whether it actually does what you think. This is why Lamport created TLA+. As with model-based design, TLA+ draws your focus to the high-level structure of a system, its essential logic, rather than to the code that implements it.

Newcombe and his colleagues at Amazon would go on to use TLA+ to find subtle, critical bugs in major systems, including bugs in the core algorithms behind S3, regarded as perhaps the most reliable storage engine in the world. It is now used widely at the company. In the tiny universe of people who had ever used TLA+, their success was not so unusual. An intern at Microsoft used TLA+ to catch a bug that could have caused every Xbox in the world to crash after four hours of use. Engineers at the European Space Agency used it to rewrite, with 10 times less code, the operating system of a probe that was the first to ever land softly on a comet. Intel uses it regularly to verify its chips.

But TLA+ occupies just a small, far corner of the mainstream, if it can be said to take up any space there at all. Even to a seasoned engineer like Newcombe, the language read at first as bizarre and esoteric—a zoo of symbols. For Lamport, this is a failure of education. Though programming was born in mathematics, it has since largely been divorced from it. Most programmers aren’t very fluent in the kind of math—logic and set theory, mostly—that you need to work with TLA+. “Very few programmers—and including very few teachers of programming—understand the very basic concepts and how they’re applied in practice. And they seem to think that all they need is code,” Lamport says. “The idea that there’s some higher level than the code in which you need to be able to think precisely, and that mathematics actually allows you to think precisely about it, is just completely foreign. Because they never learned it.”

“I hope people won’t be allowed to write programs if they don’t understand these simple things.”

Lamport sees this failure to think mathematically about what they’re doing as the problem of modern software development in a nutshell: The stakes keep rising, but programmers aren’t stepping up—they haven’t developed the chops required to handle increasingly complex problems. “In the 15th century,” he said, “people used to build cathedrals without knowing calculus, and nowadays I don’t think you’d allow anyone to build a cathedral without knowing calculus. And I would hope that after some suitably long period of time, people won’t be allowed to write programs if they don’t understand these simple things.”

Newcombe isn’t so sure that it’s the programmer who is to blame. “I’ve heard from Leslie that he thinks programmers are afraid of math. I’ve found that programmers aren’t aware—or don’t believe—that math can help them handle complexity. Complexity is the biggest challenge for programmers.” The real problem in getting people to use TLA+, he said, was convincing them it wouldn’t be a waste of their time. Programmers, as a species, are relentlessly pragmatic. Tools like TLA+ reek of the ivory tower. When programmers encounter “formal methods” (so called because they involve mathematical, “formally” precise descriptions of programs), their deep-seated instinct is to recoil.

Most programmers who took computer science in college have briefly encountered formal methods. Usually they’re demonstrated on something trivial, like a program that counts up from zero; the student’s job is to mathematically prove that the program does, in fact, count up from zero.

“I needed to change people’s perceptions on what formal methods were,” Newcombe told me. Even Lamport himself didn’t seem to fully grasp this point: Formal methods had an image problem. And the way to fix it wasn’t to implore programmers to change—it was to change yourself. Newcombe realized that to bring tools like TLA+ to the programming mainstream, you had to start speaking their language.

For one thing, he said that when he was introducing colleagues at Amazon to TLA+ he would avoid telling them what it stood for, because he was afraid the name made it seem unnecessarily forbidding: “Temporal Logic of Actions” has exactly the kind of highfalutin ring to it that plays well in academia, but puts off most practicing programmers. He tried also not to use the terms “formal,” “verification,” or “proof,” which reminded programmers of tedious classroom exercises. Instead, he presented TLA+ as a new kind of “pseudocode,” a stepping-stone to real code that allowed you to exhaustively test your algorithms—and that got you thinking precisely early on in the design process. “Engineers think in terms of debugging rather than ‘verification,’” he wrote, so he titled his internal talk on the subject to fellow Amazon engineers “Debugging Designs.” Rather than bemoan the fact that programmers see the world in code, Newcombe embraced it. He knew he’d lose them otherwise. “I’ve had a bunch of people say, ‘Now I get it,’” Newcombe says.

This code has created a level of complexity that is entirely new. And it has made possible a new kind of failure.

He has since left Amazon for Oracle, where he’s been able to convince his new colleagues to give TLA+ a try. For him, using these tools is now a matter of responsibility. “We need to get better at this,” he said.

“I’m self-taught, been coding since I was nine, so my instincts were to start coding. That was my only—that was my way of thinking: You’d sketch something, try something, you’d organically evolve it.” In his view, this is what many programmers today still do. “They google, and they look on Stack Overflow” (a popular website where programmers answer each other’s technical questions) “and they get snippets of code to solve their tactical concern in this little function, and they glue it together, and iterate.”

“And that’s completely fine until you run smack into a real problem.”

In the summer of 2015, a pair of American security researchers, Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek, convinced that car manufacturers weren’t taking software flaws seriously enough, demonstrated that a 2014 Jeep Cherokee could be remotely controlled by hackers. They took advantage of the fact that the car’s entertainment system, which has a cellular connection (so that, for instance, you can start your car with your iPhone), was connected to more central systems, like the one that controls the windshield wipers, steering, acceleration, and brakes (so that, for instance, you can see guidelines on the rearview screen that respond as you turn the wheel). As proof of their attack, which they developed on nights and weekends, they hacked into Miller’s car while a journalist was driving it on the highway, and made it go haywire; the journalist, who knew what was coming, panicked when they cut the engines, forcing him to a slow crawl on a stretch of road with no shoulder to escape to.

Although they didn’t actually create one, they showed that it was possible to write a clever piece of software, a “vehicle worm,” that would use the onboard computer of a hacked Jeep Cherokee to scan for and hack others; had they wanted to, they could have had simultaneous access to a nationwide fleet of vulnerable cars and SUVs. (There were at least five Fiat Chrysler models affected, including the Jeep Cherokee.) One day they could have told them all to, say, suddenly veer left or cut the engines at high speed.

“We need to think about software differently,” Valasek told me. Car companies have long assembled their final product from parts made by hundreds of different suppliers. But where those parts were once purely mechanical, they now, as often as not, come with millions of lines of code. And while some of this code—for adaptive cruise control, for auto braking and lane assist—has indeed made cars safer (“The safety features on my Jeep have already saved me countless times,” says Miller), it has also created a level of complexity that is entirely new. And it has made possible a new kind of failure.

In the world of the self-driving car, software can’t be an afterthought.

“There are lots of bugs in cars,” Gerard Berry, the French researcher behind Esterel, said in a talk. “It’s not like avionics—in avionics it’s taken very seriously. And it’s admitted that software is different from mechanics.” The automotive industry is perhaps among those that haven’t yet realized they are actually in the software business.

“We don’t in the automaker industry have a regulator for software safety that knows what it’s doing,” says Michael Barr, the software expert who testified in the Toyota case. NHTSA, he says, “has only limited software expertise. They’ve come at this from a mechanical history.” The same regulatory pressures that have made model-based design and code generation attractive to the aviation industry have been slower to come to car manufacturing. Emmanuel Ledinot, of Dassault Aviation, speculates that there might be economic reasons for the difference, too. Automakers simply can’t afford to increase the price of a component by even a few cents, since it is multiplied so many millionfold; the computers embedded in cars therefore have to be slimmed down to the bare minimum, with little room to run code that hasn’t been hand-tuned to be as lean as possible. “Introducing model-based software development was, I think, for the last decade, too costly for them.”

One suspects the incentives are changing. “I think the autonomous car might push them,” Ledinot told me—“ISO 26262 and the autonomous car might slowly push them to adopt this kind of approach on critical parts.” (ISO 26262 is a safety standard for cars published in 2011.) Barr said much the same thing: In the world of the self-driving car, software can’t be an afterthought. It can’t be built like today’s airline-reservation systems or 911 systems or stock-trading systems. Code will be put in charge of hundreds of millions of lives on the road and it has to work. That is no small task.

“Computing is fundamentally invisible,” Gerard Berry said in his talk. “When your tires are flat, you look at your tires, they are flat. When your software is broken, you look at your software, you see nothing.”

“So that’s a big problem.”

*This article originally stated that there were 10 million ways for the Toyota Camry to cause unintended acceleration. We regret the error.

Related Video

Information Management is a big bucket that holds a number of associated degrees. For example, one of them, Information Systems, is the study of complementary networks that people and organizations use to collect, filter, process, create, and distribute data.

An MS in Information Systems is distinct from related degrees in Information Management, Information Technology and Computer Science, but all four degrees are a good fit for early-career and mid-career professionals who are looking to bolster their IT skills.

Maybe you’re a consultant, a business analyst, a product developer, an implementation manager, a software solutions expert or an IT manager. If you think knowing how to better use information to make informed business decisions would help you advance in your career, any of the following degrees could help you get there – but there are slight differences.

MS in Information Management

Focus/objective

A master’s in Information Management helps those interested in bridging the gap between business and technology achieve that connection. Students learn the effective use of information for the business purpose it serves, and about how to facilitate the secure sharing of information inside and outside of an organization. The Syracuse University School of Information Studies offers this degree on-campus and online.

Core skills

Technical

Analytical

Managerial

Deploy emerging technologies

Manage high-value resources

Key Courses

Information systems analysis

Data science

Information security

Technological infrastructure

Management principles

MS in Information Technology

Focus/objective

Working with hardware, software, databases, and networks — the technology involved in the information systems. Students learn the functioning of IT components and how they provide the base to store, network, process, manipulate, and disseminate information.

Core skills

Mathematics

Database design

Computer science and forensics

Programming languages

Key Courses

Object-oriented programming

Software engineering

Fundamentals of computer systems

Information security

MS in Computer Science

Focus/objective

The MS in Computer Science curriculum focuses on software and the planning, design, implementation, testing, and management of computer systems and applications. Students will learn algorithm investigation, design efficiency, and implementation and application of computer systems.

Core skills

Security and assurance

Artificial intelligence

Computer architecture

Advanced programming

Key Courses

Structured programming and formal methods

Computer architecture

Principles of operating systems

Design and analysis of algorithms

MS in Information Systems

Focus/objective

Just as an MS in Information Management helps build a business-and-technology bridge, a master’s in Information Systems bridges business and computer science. Students focus on information and learning about the equipment, processes and people involved in the dissemination of that information within an organization.

Core skills

Actuarial sciences

Analytics and programming

Communications

Computer security and auditing

Key Courses

Information theory

Foundations of management

Social science

Information technology

Career Track

The 2017 tech hiring report from Robert Half Technology found there’s still a shortage of skilled tech talent in North America. “Network security and big data initiatives” are driving demand for information systems professionals, according to the report, and while employers are making generous offers, they’re also being selective.

More than 6 in 10 (61 percent) chief information officers told Robert Half that it’s challenging to find skilled technology professionals, while 37 percent said staying up to date on industry trends is the greatest source of pressure on technology professionals. Asked which areas today’s technology professionals could most use improvement, the most frequently-selected answer by CIOs (at 28 percent) was “communication skills, including written, interpersonal and face-to-face communication.”

MS in Information Systems

Chief information services officer

Vice president of information systems

Director of systems development

Product manager

If you believe new Information Management skills will help put you in front of employers hungry for tech leaders within their companies, it could be the right time to explore one of these degrees to help you advance in your career.

Movers & Shakers is where you can keep up with new CIO appointments and gain valuable insight into the job market and CIO hiring trends. As every company becomes a technology company, CEOs and corporate boards are seeking multi-dimensional CIOs with superior skills in technology, communications, business strategy and digital innovation. The role is more challenging than ever before — but even more exciting and rewarding! If you have CIO job news to share, please email me!

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New CIO appointments added June 12

Ben Pivar promoted to CIO at Carter’s

Ben Pivar has been named CIO at Carter’s. He was most recently vice president of retail IT with the firm and vice president of IT supply chain prior to that. Previously, he was senior vice president with Capgemini. Pivar has a Bechelor of Science degree in physics from the University of California, Irvine, and he holds an MBA in operations, marketing from the University of Virginia – Darden Graduate School of Business Administration.

Allan Cockriel now senior vice president global CIO with Petrofac

Petrofac

Allan Cockriel

As senior vice president and global CIO at Petrofac, Allan Cockriel will be responsible for driving the company’s continued digital transformation, as well as for IT and service delivery.

Cockriel comes to the company from GE, where he was for several years, working in various divisions such as GE Oil & Gas and GE Power, for which he was most recently vice president IT/global executive CIO. Cockriel holds a BSBs in management information systems, corporate finance, and risk management from the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management.

Shahid Sumar has been named CIO of Bank Albaraka Pakistan. Prior to that, he was CIO at Summit Bank, Pakistan, a position he’d held for more than seven years. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Karachi, and a master’s degree in computer science, software engineering from Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology.

Lety Duran Nettles named CIO for Novant Health

As CIO at Novant Health, Lety Duran Nettles is responsible for enhancing the digital experience for patients and employees, as well as providing superior IT capabilities in order that the healthcare provider delivers a “remarkable patient experience, in every dimension, every time.” She was most recently vice president of digital technology strategy & portfolio at Baker Hughes. Nettles has a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from Texas State University.

Paola Arbour appointed CIO for Tenet Healthcare

Paola Arbour was named CIO of Tenet Healthcare. As such, she will have enterprise-wide responsibility for all of IT. She will also be driving transformation and building consumer-oriented technology strategies. Arbour was most recently president at ProV Interational, and prior to that, she was vice president of services global delivery for ServiceNow. Arbour has a degree from Michigan State University.

Sally Gilligan promoted to CIO at Gap Inc.

Gap Inc.

Sally Gilligan

As CIO of Gap Inc., Sally Gilligan oversees the company’s technology organization, driving retail, e-commerce, and global enterprise technology. Most recently, Gilligan was senior vice president of product operations and supply chain strategy, a role she’d held since 2015. She has been with Gap since 2004. Gilligan holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Georgetown University and an MBA from University of Chicago.

Rajesh Kulkarni named vice president and CIO at Lehigh Hanson

Rajesh Kulkarni has been named vice president and CIO at Lehigh Hanson. He came tothe company from Titan America, where he had been vice president and CIO. Kulkarni has a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Amravati, a master’s degree in information technology, IT system design, development, and implementation from Savitribai Phule Pune University, and an MBA in international business management from the University of Buffalo School of Management, The State University of New York.

As chief technology and digital operations officer at Hudson’s Bay, Stephen Gold will lead the technology and digital strategy for HBC, aligning digital operations and technical teams under one Center of Excellence for the company. Prior to coming to Hudson’s Bay, he was executive vice president of technology operations and innovation and CIO at CVS Health. And before that, he was senior vice president and CIO for Avaya. Gold holds a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from Saint John’s University.

Dave & Buster’s hires JP Hurtado for CIO

JP Hurtado, a senior level technology executive with nearly 20 years of hospitality experience, joins Dave & Buster’s from Royal Caribbean Cruises, where he was most recently AVP of shipboard technology. He had been with the cruise line since November 2004. Hurtado earned a B.S.B.A. in decision information sciences from the University of Florida.

BNB Bank names Art Phidd as senior vice president, CIO

Art Phidd joins BNB Bank from Community Preservation Corporation, where he had been vice president – CIO for nearly three years. Prior to that, he was CTO with DJI Holdings. Phidd has a bachelor’s degree in business administration & marketing from CUNY Medgar Evers College and an MBA from Long Island University.

Matt Pammer appointed CIO at Prime Therapeutics

Matt Pammer joins Prime Therapeutics as CIO. In his new role, he will lead all of Prime’s information technology. Most recently, Pammer had been at AstraZeneca, where he was vice president of global commercial IT. Pammer had been with the firm, in a variety of IT roles, for nearly 25 years. Pammer has a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from Albright College, and an MBA from Fox School of Business and Management at Temple University.

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New CIO appointments added May 1

Steven Carter now vice president of IS&T and CIO with CNX

Steven Carter is responsible for leading the CNX Information Systems & Technology (IS&T) function to drive the modernization of the CNX systems landscape and workplace post-separation from CONSOL Energy, as well as to lead digital innovation for the company. He was most recently CIO with C&J Energy Services. Carter holds a BSc Eng degree in petroleum engineering from the Imperial College of London.

Paul Krueger named vice president of IT/CIO at J.B. Poindexter

Paul Krueger has been named vice president of IT/CIO at J.B. Poindexter. Prior to that, he was the CIO for Stewart & Stevenson and had been with GE Oil & Gas for several years before that. Krueger has a BBA from the Henry B. Tippie College of Business from the University of Iowa, and an MS in management information systems from DePaul University.

Cylance names Kumud Kalia as CIO

As CIO at Cylance, Kumud Kalia will be responsible for the strategy, implementation, and management of infrastructure and applications. He has more than 30 years of experience scaling IT systems for high-growth companies, most recently as CIO at Akamai. Previously, Kalia was CIO and executive vice president of customer operations at Direct Energy. He holds a BSc in electronic engineering from Bangor University.

Howard Melnick now executive vice president, CIO with Signet Jewelers

Signet Jewelers

Howard Melnick

Howard Melnick was named executive vice president, CIO with Signet Jewelers. He will be responsible for developing and implementing global IT strategies in order to enable business value. Previously, he was senior vice president and CIO at Ralph Lauren. Melnick has a BS in accounting from Binghamton University and an MBA in finance from Fordham Gabelli School of Business. He is also a certified public accountant and a member of the Blumberg Capital CIO Advisory Council and the Technology Committee for The Executive Forum.

Nancy Berce now CIO with Johnson Controls

Nancy Berce has been named CIO with Johnson Controls. In this role, she is tasked with building collaborations between IT and the business community, among many other things. Berce joins the company from Abbott, where she was vice president of business and technology services. She has also held several other IT leadership roles at the pharmaceutical company, where she had been for many years. Berce has a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and computer information systems from Regis University, as well as a master’s degree in mathematics from the Colorado School of Mines.

Drew Domecq named senior vice president, CIO with DSW

Drew Domecq has been named senior vice president and CIO at DSW. He comes to the shoe and apparel line from Bob Evans, where he was CIO. In Domecq’s new role, he will oversee the ongoing evolution of the company’s digital platforms in order to create engaging customer experiences and grow key initiatives. Previously, Domecq was vice president of enterprise solutions at Wendy’s. He holds an Atrium Baccalaureus (AB) from Princeton, and an MBA from Northwestern University – Kellogg School of Management.

Ron Guerrier now CIO at Express Scripts

Express Scripts

Ron Guerrier

Ron Guerrier has been named CIO at Express Scripts where he is responsible for the company’s strategic investments in and application of technology to increase affordability and broaden access to prescription drugs for the 80 million-plus customers of the company. Most recently, Guerrier was executive vice president and CIO at Farmers Insurance. Prior to that, he was vice president and CIO with Toyota Financial Services. He is a board member for the CIO Executive Council from IDG and is the chairman of the board for the UCLA-sponsored IS Associates. Guerrier has a bachelor’s degree in economics and finance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign College of Business and a master’s degree in operations management and supervision from North Park University.

Carrie Rasmussen named CIO at Save Mart

Carrie Rasmussen has been named CIO at Save Mart. Rasmussen was formerly the group vice president with Albertsons and had previously been vice president of IT, customer service, and support at Safeway. She has a bachelor’s degree in agriculture – animal science and a master’s degree in agricultural – agriculture business management from California Polytechnic State University – San Luis Obispo.

Nick Colisto now CIO with Avery Dennison

Avery Dennison

Nick Colisto

Nick Colisto has been named CIO at Avery Dennison where he is in charge of driving and executing the enterprise IT strategy for the company vis-à-vis IT trends and efficiencies, as well as improving delivery of IT services and products. Colisto was previously senior vice president and CIO at Xylem. He has a BBA in management information systems and a master’s degree in information systems from Pace University.

Andy Rhodes named CIO for UNICEF USA

UNICEF USA

Andy Rhodes

Andy Rhodes has been named CIO for UNICEF USA. He is responsible for the organization’s technology, governance, and data strategy. Rhodes was previously CIO for the United States Golf Association (USGA) and was vice president of technology for Publicis Groupe prior to that. He has a BS in information systems & economics from the University of Pittsburgh.

Marc West promoted from CTO to CIO with Fiserv

Marc West has been promoted to CIO at Fiserv. In his new role, he oversees information technology infrastructure and operations, corporate systems, enterprise architecture, and technology governance. And he leads the company’s strategic focus on next- generation technology platforms. West joined the company in 2014. Prior to that he worked at CashEdge. He holds a BS from the University of Maryland and an MS from Golden Gate.

Jude Schramm now EVP and CIO for Fifth Third Bancorp

Jude Schramm has been named executive vice president and CIO for Fifth Third Bancorp. Schramm will lead all of the IT organization. He joined the company from GE Aviation, where he had been for many years, and had most recently been CIO. He has a BBA in information systems from the University of Cincinnati College of Business.

Jeff Wilkinson named CIO for Delaware North

Delaware North

Jeff Wilkinson

Jeff Wilkinson joins Delaware North from GE, where he was vice president and commercial CIO. In his new role as GE’s CIO, he has oversight of enterprise-wide IT functions and infrastructure. Prior to GE, Wilkinson was vice president of global information delivery (chief data officer) at AmerisourceBergen. He holds a BS in computer information sciences from Gwynedd-Mercy College and a M.E. in engineering science, software engineering from Penn State.

Cindy Taibi promoted to senior vice president and CIO at The New York Times